It’s 1 March 1994, and at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the 36th annual Grammy awards are under way. Though Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Membrane and Dr Dre & Snoop Dogg’s Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang are favourites for best rap performance by a duo or group, it’s Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat), the debut single from Brooklyn-based underdogs Digable Planets, that wins.

And the upsets don’t stop there: collecting the award with bandmates Craig “Doodlebug” Irving and Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira, founder Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler gazes out at the celeb-packed room and kills the mood dead. “We’d like everybody to think about the people right outside this door that’s homeless,” he says. “As you sit in these $900 seats … they out there not eating at all. Also, we’d like to say to the universal Black family that one day we’re gonna recognise our true enemy. We’re gonna stop attacking each other, and maybe then we’ll get some changes going on.”

It was a defining show of seriousness from a trio misperceived as giddy, jazz-loving bohos. Before the year was done, Digable Planets released Blowout Comb, the substantive, subversive second album Irving describes as “about the pain and joy of being Black in America”. Now seen as a masterpiece of alternative hip-hop, the group are celebrating its 30th anniversary with a gig at EFG London jazz festival this week.

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